Operation Thin Mint 2014

The 13-year-old Rancho Santa Fe girl spent three hours a day and every weekend from February to mid-March selling, selling, selling those Tagalongs, Do-si-dohs and of course, the all-time favorites, Thin Mints and Samoas.

For the third straight year she sold the most boxes of any scout — 5,104 — and along with other top sellers got to ride in a helicopter at Saturday’s celebration aboard the USS Midway.

“You just don’t give up,” Roni said. “You plan and go for it. It’s like a sport — you go all out.”

The event marked the culmination of “Operation Thin Mint,” the local Girl Scouts’ campaign to send to cookies to troops in Japan, Korea, Afghanistan and other outposts and naval ships around the world.

Officials said that the San Diego-only program accumulated orders for 198,470 boxes this year. That’s nearly $794,000 in sales and, get this, 254 million calories, if you figure each box of Thin Mints weighs in at 1,280 calories.

Shipments from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles started in January and will continue throughout the year as various military supply depots and warehouses make room for this influx of consumable smiles.

“This is an unbelievable thing that you do to give that taste of home,” Rear Adm. Patrick Lorge, commander of the Southwest Navy Region, told more than 2,300 scouts and their families who assembled for the 10th year on the Midway flight deck.

By the numbers

Operation Thin Mint

$793,880: Total sales this year

198,420: Boxes sold

1,280: Calories per box of Thin Mints

Source: Girl Scouts San Diego

Many continued their service by writing and drawing greetings to troops that will be bundled up and taped inside the 12-foot shrink-wrapped pallets. The packages will take several weeks to go from West Coast ports to their destinations halfway around the world.

Brig. Gen. James Bierman Jr., commanding general at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, confessed that he always looked forward to the cookie delivery when he was overseas.

“I’ve been known to dig through them and find that box of Samoas before anyone else did,” he said.

Rep. Juan Vargas, D-San Diego, said troops he spoke to in Afghanistan last year appreciated the gesture.

“They really get excited when something comes from home,” he said.

The flight deck was awash with girls in green and blue waving flags and balloons. About 200 girls spent Friday night on the carrier, and some imagined a military life for themselves.

“It would be hard but fun,” said Wynter Trumpfheller, 10, from La Mesa Troop 3787.

Payton Perkins, 11, of Rancho Bernardo was there with her father, Marine Corps Maj. Mike Perkins, who has deployed twice to Iraq and once in the Arabian Peninsula.

“I’m a Thin Mint guy,” he said, and he always freezes the cookies first. “It’s the only way to go.”

Operation Thin Mint began in 2002 in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. San Diego Girl Scouts CEO Jo Dee Jacob, a retired Navy captain, used her 27 years of knowledge of Navy logistics to arrange for shipments, first to Singapore and then other distribution hubs.